In large commercial and residential construction projects, accommodations must be made for utility lines and storm water run-off management. For example in commercial building structures, utility lines and cables such as electrical lines, natural gas lines, and communications lines need to be installed in the interior and the exterior of the buildings and connected to local grids and service lines. Inside multi-story commercial buildings, these lines and cables are often routed below floors, above suspended ceilings or within columns and walls inside of buildings. Where routed below floors, architects and civil engineers often have to provide elevated, semi-permanent floor structures to access and route such lines or permanently mount hollow conduits or pipes in the individual concrete floors so lines can initially be installed or future lines routed and serviced.
Further, respecting commercial and residential building structures, storm water, collection, management and retention structures are of increasing concern due to potential environmental impacts of such construction projects. Exterior storm water management systems are often below-grade structures, and are used to manage storm water run-off from impervious surfaces such as roofs, sidewalks, roads, and parking lots. Sub-surface water collection and storage chamber systems can be designed to retain storm water run-off and allow for a much slower discharge of storm water effluents. As an example, such systems can be constructed underneath vehicle parking lots and structures, such that the storage chamber system receives water from drain inlets or other structures, and discharge it over time. An example of existing exterior stormwater devices is the Triton Stormwater Solutions chamber management systems.
The design and installation of conventional underground stormwater chamber solutions is challenging due to many factors. For example, as underground systems, the space or footprint of the large and lengthy chambers is restricted by the land owned and available for use by these systems. Where a large rectangular space is not available at a site for parallel orientation of multiple chambers, irregular configurations and less than optimal orientations of the chambers are necessary to maximize the spatial volume to retain and gradually disburse the stormwater or other water run-off.
There is a need for a robust modular conduit unit structure that provides an interior chamber which can be selectively configured to provide multi-directional pathways for routing of interior and exterior lines and serve as a retention chamber for the gradual diffusion of fluids to the environment.